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Millions of American families have slipped into what the U.S. Census Bureau defines as poor. About 46.2 million people are considered to be living in poverty, 2.6 million more than last year.
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There haven't been this many Americans living in poverty since 1993, according to the Census Bureau.

More than 15% of the population is now considered poor. The rate is 22% for children, meaning at least one of every five U.S. kids is living in poverty.

"If you qualify as being in poverty today, then you're really in deep poverty," said Mark Bergel, founder and executive director of A Wider Circle, a Maryland-based charity that provides furniture and other basic necessities to needy families.

Bergel told CNN's Lisa Sylvester that the numbers used to define poverty today are extremely low and "based on an outdated formula from the '60s."

The Census Bureau defines an individual as poor if they make less than $11,139 a year. The dollar amount rises for every member added to the household. http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/29/us/cnnheroes-usa-poverty/index.html?hpt=
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Poverty is defined as the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions.[1] According to the U.S. Census Bureau data released Tuesday September 13th, 2011, the nation's poverty rate rose to 15.1% (46.2 million) in 2010,[2] up from 14.3% (approximately 43.6 million) in 2009 and to its highest level since 1993. In 2008, 13.2% (39.8 million) Americans lived in relative poverty.[3]

The government's definition of poverty is not tied to an absolute value of how much an individual or family can afford, but is tied to a relative level based on total income received. For example, the poverty level for 2011 was set at $22,350 (total yearly income) for a family of four.[4] Most Americans (58.5%) will spend at least one year below the poverty line at some point between ages 25 and 75.[5] There remains some controversy over whether the official poverty threshold over- or understates poverty.

The most common measure of poverty in the United States is the "poverty threshold" set by the U.S. government. This measure recognizes poverty as a lack of those goods and services commonly taken for granted by members of mainstream society.[6] The official threshold is adjusted for inflation using the consumer price index.

Relative poverty describes how income relates to the median income, and does not imply that the person is lacking anything. In general the United States has some of the highest relative poverty rates among industrialized countries.[7] According to a 2008 report released by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, on average, rates of poverty are persistently higher in rural and inner city parts of the country as compared to suburban areas.[8][9] The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is increasing to record levels with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty.

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In recent years, there have been a number of concerns raised about the official U.S. poverty measure. In 1995, the National Research Council's Committee on National Statistics convened a panel on measuring poverty. The findings of the panel were that "the official poverty measure in the United States is flawed and does not adequately inform policy-makers or the public about who is poor and who is not poor."

The panel was chaired by Robert Michael, former Dean of the Harris School of the University of Chicago. According to Michael, the official U.S. poverty measure "has not kept pace with far-reaching changes in society and the economy."

Many sociologists and government officials have argued that poverty in the United States is understated, meaning that there are more households living in actual poverty than there are households below the poverty threshold.[47] A recent NPR report states that as much as 30% of Americans have trouble making ends meet and other advocates have made supporting claims that the rate of actual poverty in the US is far higher than that calculated by using the poverty threshold.[47] While the poverty threshold is updated for inflation every year, the basket of goods used to determine what constitutes being deprived of a socially acceptable miniumum standard of living has not been updated since 1955. As a result, the current poverty line only takes goods into account that were common more than 50 years ago, updating their cost using the Consumer Price Index. Mollie Orshansky, who devised the original goods basket and methodology to measure poverty, used by the U.S. government, in 1963-65, updated the goods basket in 2000, finding that the actual poverty threshold, i.e. the point where a person is excluded from the nation's prevailing consumption patterns, is at roughly 170% of the official poverty threshold.[6] According to John Schwarzt, a political scientist at the University of Arizona:

“ The official poverty line today is essentially what it takes in today's dollars, adjusted for inflation, to purchase the same poverty-line level of living that was appropriate to a half century ago, in 1955, for that year furnished the basic data for the formula for the very first poverty measure. Updated thereafter only for inflation, the poverty line lost all connection over time with current consumption patterns of the average family. Quite a few families then didn't have their own private telephone, or a car, or even a mixer in their kitchen... The official poverty line has thus been allowed to fall substantially below a socially decent minimum, even though its intention was to measure such a minimum. ”

The issue of understating poverty is especially pressing in states with both a high cost of living and a high poverty rate such as California where the median home price in May 2006 was determined to be $564,430.[48] With half of all homes being priced above the half million dollar mark and prices in urban areas such as San Francisco, San Jose or Los Angeles being higher than the state average, it is almost impossible for not just the poor but also lower middle class worker to afford decent housing[citation needed], and no possibility of home ownership. In the Monterey area, where the low-pay industry of agriculture is the largest sector in the economy and the majority of the population lacks a college education the median home price was determined to be $723,790, requiring an upper middle class income which only roughly 20% of all households in the county boast.[48][49]

Such fluctuations in local markets are however not considered in the Federal poverty threshold and thus leave many who live in poverty-like conditions out of the total number of households classified as poor.

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